Thursday, June 22, 2017

Journaling With the Cricut

After finishing this editing round of Altered to Death, I decided to set it aside for a day to come back to it with fresh eyes for another pass. Since I've either been working on the book or at the golf course the last few weeks, I was going to take the day off and do so crafting. (I'm also on a mini break from my part time job because of a stress fracture requiring me to wear a boot/air cast...hard to get around with it on.)

I had a page that needed some journaling and wanted to change up from handwriting it so I used the write function on the Cricut Explore Air. I've used it in the past and loved it. My original idea for this post was to give some nontechnical instructions (ex. click on the icon that looks like bread with jelly) on how to use the function. Well, I've had to make a slight change in plans as Cricut just released a Beta version of their design program and I stumbled it through it today. Once the program is out of beta mode, and I've practiced on it some more, I'll give some pointers. It took me awhile to figure out how to move the text to the area where I wanted it to write (hint: instead of "grabbing" and moving like in the prior version, there is a section on top stating where the image or text is located, the inches needed to be changed to move the item.) Of course, now that I figured it out it might change.

While I like the look of the journaling, and the relative ease of using the function, it does take a long time for the text to write. It took about fifteen minutes to complete the journaling box. The first time I used it I panicked a little when I saw it skipping letters in words and going to the beginning of a sentence without completing the previous one, but upon watching the Cricut do it's thing, I discovered that is the way the Cricut does the writing.